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The Blog of Entrepreneur Pete WilliamsWed, 04 Feb 2015 06:31:02 +0000en-UShourly1How We’ve Used Crowdsourcing to Split Test (And Why You Should Too)http://preneurmarketing.com/online-marketing/weve-used-crowdsourcing-split-test/
http://preneurmarketing.com/online-marketing/weve-used-crowdsourcing-split-test/#commentsThu, 11 Dec 2014 11:15:24 +0000http://preneurmarketing.com/?p=11984If you’ve been following us for awhile, you’ve no doubt heard us mention split testing a couple of times. We love having the ability to be pragmatic in our efforts, trying multiple approaches to achieve the best result. And we use split testing in various aspects of what we do, from trying different pieces of copy to generate website traffic in different regions, to trying out different email messages with subsets of the same audience segment. There’s a time for split testing nearly everything in marketing, but one of the most interesting and effective use we’ve found for split testing

]]>If you’ve been following us for awhile, you’ve no doubt heard us mention split testing a couple of times. We love having the ability to be pragmatic in our efforts, trying multiple approaches to achieve the best result. And we use split testing in various aspects of what we do, from trying different pieces of copy to generate website traffic in different regions, to trying out different email messages with subsets of the same audience segment. There’s a time for split testing nearly everything in marketing, but one of the most interesting and effective use we’ve found for split testing comes through crowdsourcing, which was a recent topic of discussion in a Preneur Podcast featuring Alec Lynch, co-founder of DesignCrowd.

Over the years, we’ve leveraged crowdsourcing in a few ways. We’ve used 99designs.com extensively to help us find designs for product packaging elements and Web properties that we’ve launched over the years.

And it’s with good reason that we’ve turned to the crowd.An Inc.comarticle by Peter Gasca, of Wild Creations, calls out six compelling reasons for trying crowdsourcing.

Gasca’s list includes:

Reducing costs

Eliminating overhead

Minimising management

Maximising options

Optimising creativity

Creating buzz

As you might notice, all of these are welcome occurrences in your business (not to mention that each of those reasons coincides with one or more of the 7 Levers of Business). All of the above factors have led us at Preneur HQ to love crowdsourcing, and once you’ve given it a try, you’re likely to love it, too.

With that in mind, in this essay, we’ll look at the following:

Ways we’ve used crowdsourcing as a form of split testing

How you can use crowdsourcing to get better results

Outsourcing beyond design with a split testing ethos

Our goal here is for you to understand why we’ve used split testing by way of crowdsourcing, and that you will leave here knowing how to do it yourself.

Let’s get started!

Ways We’ve Used Crowdsourcing as a Form of Split Testing

Let’s start with how we used crowdsourcing to split test designs for a product. We’ve used the site a few times.

One instance came when we posted a job asking designers to revamp the homepage for Infiniti Telecommunications. For that job, we fielded 89 designs to pick the winning design (which served as the homepage there until our most recent major site update).

89 designs were submitted for the Infiniti homepage redesign.

Another task for which we turned to 99designs was a redesign of Discountmobiles.com.au. For that task, we chose one design of more than 70 entries, and even chanced the selection of a competent designer who was able to help us improve the usability of our site through her own tweaks to our design brief.

The winning design for Discount Mobiles.

We relaunched the ‘Own the G’ campaign, in 2010. As the video at that link explains, the squeeze page for the relaunch was actually three different split-tested pages. We created three different headlines, three videos, and even three bits of copy around the opt-in form/button itself. We then used Google Website Optimiser to randomly assign variations of the content to each visitor who landed on the page. From the resulting analytics, we were able to work out what combination worked best.

We received more than thirty entries for the Own the G relaunch.

Ultimately, we found that one particular combination resulted in upwards of six times the opt-ins. While the whole exercise of relaunching the ‘Own the G’ campaign is an example of split testing, the part of it that we’ll focus on, is the redesign of the collectible certificate that accompanied each piece of the timber from the G’s Ponsford Stand, which was one the bonuses added-on to the sale of each piece of limited edition crested carpet from the MCG.

The winning design from 99designs.

To get a great design for the certificate, we turned to 99designs, where we prompted the crowd to contribute designs for the backer, with $100 offered for the winning designer. We received submissions, admittedly of varying quality, but we we ultimately able to narrow it down to a clear winner fairly quickly.

The thinking behind using 99designs for projects such as these is as follows:

Rather than plunking down $500 or more for a single design from a freelance design marketplace like eLance or oDesk, we were able to spend a comparable amount for each project at 99designs, while benefiting from having more than one freelance designer (and, therefore, a multitude of designs) to choose from. This is split testing, potentially split 99 different ways!

And that exposes the underlying reason for split testing in the first place: directing your dollar spend towards only those processes that generate the best result. In our case, a wealth of options is typically the desired result, and turning to crowdsourcing gives us plenty of designs to choose from.

News Report on How Pete First Sold the G:

How You Can Use Crowdsourcing to Get Better Results

So, do you feel like you’re ready to get in the crowdsourcing game?

We’ve chiefly used crowdsourcing for graphic and Web design, but there are many other tasks that platforms like 99designs (and Designcrowd.com) have to offer.

Here are some other common crowdsourcing tasks:

App design

Packaging design

Stationery design

Signage

Tee shirt design

Photo editing

WordPress design/development/administration

PowerPoint creation

And there’s a lot more – pretty much anything related to ‘design,’ in all its various forms. Basically, any task for which you’d find value in having a wealth of options is a task that’s suited for crowdsourcing.

Swipe + Deploy!

Now, let’s dive right into a Swipe + Deploy strategy for outsourcing a job. Once you’ve set up an account at 99designs, you’ll want to create your first job brief. We’ve included the one from which all the briefs for the design jobs we’ve done have been derived. The idea here is that you can take what we’ve done and simply fill in the blanks with your needs.

Here’s our outsourced job template:

OBJECTIVE:

I am looking for an experienced …

JOB SPECS:

Describe what needs to happen…

BACKGROUND/ CONTEXT:

Give an overview of how/where this work will be used…

INPUTS PROVIDED:

You will be provided with…

OUTPUT REQUIRED:

Describe the desired result…

For a working example, let’s look at how we filled in some of the important parts of an EHS sales letter at DesignCrowd.

Here’s an excerpt from the actual advert.

OBJECTIVE:

I am looking for an alternative design for our product sales letter (webpage) at www.earHeroSports.com.au which will be used as an A/B Split Test to hopefully increase conversions.

BACKGROUND/ CONTEXT:

We are currently driving traffic to the site via Facebook Adverts, and strategic affiliates in the cycling and triathlon niche. Most visitors to the site have no pre-awareness of the brand or product, so it’s typically a cold visitor, seeing the product for the first time, driven by ‘safety focused’ advertising messages.

INPUTS PROVIDED:

– All the copy which you see currently on the sales letter / webpage is needed, so please incorporate all copy. (If you feel some should be left out etc, please message and explain your reasoning etc.)

– A range of product images are available here:

[LinkOmitted.com.au](I am also having a photographer take new product shots this week, so if you feel a specific type of image is needed, just let me know, and we can have it shot.)

– We also have an account at depositphotos.com if other images are needed, which you can’t / won’t supply.

OUTPUT REQUIRED:

– Development ready PSD (with fonts etc)

ADDITIONAL DESIGN NOTES:

– The site does NOT have to be parallax in nature, like the current design.

– The video and be in a pop-up, or embedded on page

- The call to action (But Now) section of the current site definitely needs a redesign. (Attached is something we are about to replace that section of the current design with. So please incorporate that ‘value style’ message. )

As you can tell from the brief, we’ve striven to be clear in our instructions, even letting the outsourcing candidates in on the fact that their task is to create a page for the purposes of split testing. The brief for a crowdsourcing job is a lot like a regular job posting. But, unlike a regular job advert, the crowdsourcing brief should succinctly describe the singular task you need done, rather than macro-level educational and skill requirements. In a crowdsourcing brief, the task at hand is the sole focus, so keep that in mind.

Crowdsourcing also opens you up to social proof: voting for the best design. Here, the crowd votes for designs for the EHS project.

Outsourcing Beyond Design with Split Testing Ethos

You may be wondering how you can split test other outsourced tasks, beyond those tasks that generally qualify as design.

Our good friend, James Tuckerman, founder of Anthill Online, uses split testing in all of his hiring decisions. When James hires a new team member for his family of websites, he’s pooling talent from freelance marketplaces like eLance. But, despite that site not strictly adhering to the crowdsourcing model, James designs his job briefs to harness the exact same benefit we do: more options.

When James needs to add a new journalist to his stable of regular freelancers, he does more than just take a proverbial shot in the dark on the freelance marketplace. He posts a job advert and hires the top three candidates to apply for the gig.

James assigns all three to complete the same task – and he pays them all their stated rate for the work, whether it is ultimately accepted or not. James knows that of those three, more often than not, one will fail to deliver the project altogether, one will do it poorly, and one will set himself or herself apart from the others by delivering quality work. This approach is so effective that every employee of Anthill Online currently employed there has made it through this process.

So, from James’ example, you can expand the crowdsourcing ethos to the freelance marketplace, allowing you to vet workers (and, thus, work itself) for more than just design-related tasks. (Pete also presented a webinar along with James that covered a lot of insights relating to this topic a while back).

Although you might be able to split test every possible task in your business, by this logic you can split test work relating to the following:

Programming

Mobile development

Writing

Editing and proofreading

Accounting

Consulting

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Lead generation

Administration

And this list goes on, as you can imagine. The idea here is to take an already wide field of freelancers and get even more value from every dollar you spend to get a given task done, therein applying the crowdsourcing mindset to outsourcing in a broader sense.

Are You Using Crowdsourcing to Your Advantage?

We’ve had great results with crowdsourcing over the years, and the ability to use it for split testing in various ways has helped us narrow our focus (and our spend). And, in the ongoing quest to raise profitability, narrowness of focus is always a plus.

PS – Keep your eyes peeled for a forthcoming article that hones in on how split testing itself can be used to increase your success in various marketing contexts.

]]>http://preneurmarketing.com/online-marketing/weve-used-crowdsourcing-split-test/feed/05 Website Alarms to Check When Daylight Savings Comes [Traffic, Opt-Ins, & Conversions]http://preneurmarketing.com/online-marketing/website-alarms/
http://preneurmarketing.com/online-marketing/website-alarms/#commentsFri, 03 Oct 2014 22:00:57 +0000http://preneurmarketing.com/?p=11491On 5 October, much of Australia (and New Zealand) enters daylight savings time, and a global campaign urges you to check the batteries in your smoke alarms as you change out the backup batteries in your clocks, in conjunction with time’s leap forward. Even if you’re not in one of the regions that does adopt daylight savings, officially, the campaign still urges you to take action around this time of year – and so do we! Household safety should, of course, be your chief concern. But we’re going to add a few tasks to your to-do list each time you

On 5 October, much of Australia (and New Zealand) enters daylight savings time, and a global campaign urges you to check the batteries in your smoke alarms as you change out the backup batteries in your clocks, in conjunction with time’s leap forward. Even if you’re not in one of the regions that does adopt daylight savings, officially, the campaign still urges you to take action around this time of year – and so do we!

Household safety should, of course, be your chief concern. But we’re going to add a few tasks to your to-do list each time you set your clocks forward an hour. So refresh the batteries in your smoke alarms and carbon monoxide detectors, then move on to our list, presented here.

Daylight savings time is also the ideal time to take care of some of the often overlooked aspects of your online business.We thought we’d help you take things one step further and start our own little campaign around checking your website alarms.

Here are five ways you can use daylight savings time to your advantage, by using it as a time to give your website an annual checkup. Here’s your checklist with Action Items noted for each step.

1. Check Webmaster Tools

Google Webmaster Tools is a valuable resource that, frankly, tells you more about your website than even your third-party website analytics tool can tell you.

The first thing to do is simple: just sign up for Google Webmaster Analytics, over here.

Once inside, you can tell a lot of specific things about your website, right away. For one thing, you can see if Google’s Web-crawling robot has even scanned your website. In the event that Googlebot cannot access your site, further action is necessary. Online marketer, Marlon Sanders, has a great blog post that tells you how to use Google Webmaster Tools to make sure everything is on the up-and-up with Google scanning your site.

Bing has a similar service to that of Google, which can is right here.

Action Item: Check webmaster tools and review your site’s robot.txt.

2. Check Your Site Analytics for ‘Big Wins’ (and Trouble Spots!)

Does your site have a highly popular, keyword-rich traffic driver? How are you going to know unless you check the success of you site’s content from time to time. The day of the change to daylight savings is a great chance to see what content is performing, so that you can either audit and fix other content to help it get better results from search engines, or create new content that emulates the ‘big wins.’

In your analytics dashboard, look for the following:

What are the top keywords drawing visitors to your site?

What types of visitors are converting the most?

What content is suffering from a high bounce rate? (That qualifies as a ‘trouble spot’)

This kind of thing may seem obvious to some, but it’s not always a lot of fun to dig around in your analytics dashboard to look for ‘big wins.’ Still, even if you’re overdue for a proper site audit, daylight savings is the perfect time to at least poke around under the bonnet.

While we’re talking search engine optimization (SEO), it’s a good time to mention Screaming Frog, which is a handy app that analyzes your webpages from an SEO perspective and generates a report detailing the issues it finds. This app is particularly handy if you have a massive site that would be too time consuming to manually audit.

Action Item: Look at your site’s analytics and find the content that draws the most visitors. Manage your content by looking for opportunities to improve new and existing content based on what you discover. Are you sitting on an SEO goldmine?

3. Check Merchant Feeds

Do your products show up in searches?

If you sell products online, merchant feeds are a great way to earn conversions. If your eCommerce business uses Google Shopping to show your products to comparison shoppers who search for your goods, it’s a good idea to check and make sure everything is working as it should. Product feed maintenance is somewhat technical, but the short version of what you’ll want to do to check on the overall effectiveness of your Google Shopping feed.

Some of the most common problems:

Feed creation issues

Feed registration issues

Formatting issues

Uploading issues

Conveniently, Google offers a helpful troubleshooting guide designed to help you keep your Google Shopping feed up and running. If you’re using another merchant feed, you’ll want to check the merchant center dashboard for the provider. Bing is another popular merchant feed provider, so if you’re using it, be sure to checkup on your Microsoft AdCenter (when you control your Bing feed) when you set your clock back.

Action Item: See your merchant feed control panel to make sure everything’s still working.

4. Check Your Checkout

Your eCommerce site needs to get one key thing right: the shopping cart/checkout process. Nothing will throw a wrench in your efforts to double your profitability, as described in The 7 Levers of Business framework, like a checkout system that doesn’t work or works so poorly that it almost invariably leads to cart abandonment.

One way to check your checkout routine thoroughly is to go through it from start to finish (hey, even if you process a payment, it’s your money anyway!). This way, you’ll know what your customers are seeing when they go to checkout from your site. You’ll also know if anything has checked from the way it functioned when the site first went online. Since your eCommerce workflow is probably using a variety of integrated cloud apps, which are updated automatically, things can go awry, or simply change in a way that you or your customers don’t like.

The only way to know is to try it out.

Action Item: Test out your shopping cart and checkout process. If you find any bugs or changes that you weren’t expecting, get them hammered out.

5. Check For Broken Links and Missing Content

No matter what type of content you have on your site, it’s a good idea to give it a thorough once-over at least once a year. As a website grows and develops, things that worked when you posted them have a way of just stopping working.

Broken links are very common. You might post a link to an external source that disappears and redirects your visitors to a 404 error. You might add a YouTube video to a page, only for the uploader to delete the video or make it private. If you link to photos hosted on other sites, those frequently disappear.

If you are a Mac user, there is an app called Integrity that conveniently scans your website to check for broken links. Screaming Frog is also helpful in this regard.

If you’d like to save some time by outsourcing the auditing of your website’s links and content, Fiverr.com has plenty of gigs from people willing to do the work for you, for the low price of $5, of course.

Action Item:Check your site for broken stuff! Consider hiring a freelancer to help you get get it done.

Have You Been Overlooking Site Alarms for Far Too Long?

Are chaos monkeys running loose on your website? Use daylight savings to remind you to check each item on our list and take back the reigns of your eCommerce website.

Website malfunctions can be a hazard to your business. Don’t lose TRAFFIC, OPT-INS, or CONVERSIONS to competitors because you let issues go on for too long. When it’s time to change your clock, it’s time to check your site. Make it a habit!

PS - Speaking of Chaos Monkeys, yes, they are a thing! Netflix famously unleashes its ‘Simian Army‘ to deliberately try and break its services. Now, for those of you running Amazon Web Services on the back end of your sites, you can now employee the Chaos Monkeys, which Netflix kindly opened up to the community. Everyone else will just have to unleash their kid nephew to reek some havoc on their site in the name of eCommerce!

]]>http://preneurmarketing.com/online-marketing/website-alarms/feed/03 Ways To Double Your Website Conversion Rates – With Tips Every Marketer Must Knowhttp://preneurmarketing.com/online-marketing/3-ways-double-website-conversion-rates-every-marketer-needs/
http://preneurmarketing.com/online-marketing/3-ways-double-website-conversion-rates-every-marketer-needs/#commentsFri, 27 Jun 2014 07:00:30 +0000http://preneurmarketing.com/?p=9474Editor’s note: This is a guest post by Toby Jenkins of Web Marketing That Works. One of Pete’s 7 levers of Business is Opt-ins. Typically, an opt-in rate of 2-3% on all of your website traffic is considered a good result. In this post, I want to focus on how, at Bluewire Media, we have been able to use landing pages that help us consistently an opt-in rate of 6-7%. The proof is in the pudding,, as you know. So here is the data comparing the last 90 days vs the previous 90 days: Even though traffic has dropped fractionally, opt-ins

One of Pete’s 7 levers of Business is Opt-ins. Typically, an opt-in rate of 2-3% on all of your website traffic is considered a good result. In this post, I want to focus on how, at Bluewire Media, we have been able to use landing pages that help us consistently an opt-in rate of 6-7%.

The proof is in the pudding,, as you know. So here is the data comparing the last 90 days vs the previous 90 days:

Even though traffic has dropped fractionally, opt-ins are actually up significantly (21%!) on the previous 90 days and our overall Opt-in rate is 6.98%. A key part of this success is that our opt-in forms follow the landing page design I want to share with you here.

The 30 Second Version:

If you only have 30 seconds then here are the 4 key take aways:

Remove leaks on your opt-in pages by removing navigation options.

Build trust by demonstrating social and expert proof.

Make it easy for people to take action by visually highlighting the next steps.

There are 3 key principles to great landing pages that we’ve learned over the last 9 years:

Remove leaks

Build trust

Make it easy for people to take action

1. Remove Leaks:

When you look at your landing page, ask yourself:

“Other than my call to action, what can a visitor click on?”

Every link on your page that is not your single call to action, is an opportunity for your visitor to leave and a distraction from the purpose of your page.

On our standard page template, even excluding the drop down menu items, there are 20 different leaks a visitor can choose from:

This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. After all, we want people to navigate and explore our website easily.

But, when it comes to the point where we want a visitor to opt-in to download one of our templates, this is far too distracting. So we have created our opt-in or landing page design which we use for our free templates like the Web Strategy Planning Template:

You’ll see on this page far fewer options for a visitor, removing the top, the main and the side navigation bars. We have only left a link on our logo, a handful of links in the body copy and there are links in our footer right at the bottom of the page.

This makes for a very uncluttered and easy to use page with far fewer “leaks”.

Now I’ll explain the other elements that make this style of page a winner.

2. Build Trust:

If you want someone to feel comfortable telling you their name and email address, you’ll need to earn their trust and make your landing page as trustworthy as possible.

Here’s what we’ve chosen to do.

Share buttons (like the image below) at the top of the page provide social proof that others have found the tool/template useful.

Slideshare

Using Slideshare to preview the actual resource means a visitor can “try before they buy” and see exactly what they are going to get.

]]>http://preneurmarketing.com/online-marketing/3-ways-double-website-conversion-rates-every-marketer-needs/feed/0Interspire Email Marketer Extension 1.01http://preneurmarketing.com/online-marketing/interspire-email-marketer-extension-add/
http://preneurmarketing.com/online-marketing/interspire-email-marketer-extension-add/#commentsMon, 30 Sep 2013 08:32:41 +0000http://preneurmarketing.com/?p=7835As we shared in our 13,000+ word epic series, Email Marketing: Self-Hosted vs Traditional Cloud-Hosted Options, after a lot of research into self-hosted email marketing autoresponder software, we decided to move our entire business across to Interspire Email Marketer (IEM) from Big Commerce. Even with all its advanced marketing functionality, there were a few key ‘Preneur-style marketing’ features missing from IEM. So we set out to rectify that problem, and have a developer from our extended team create what we’re referring to as an “Extension to Interspire Email Marketer” to ensure we had all the functionality we wanted. It was

So we set out to rectify that problem, and have a developer from our extended team create what we’re referring to as an “Extension to Interspire Email Marketer” to ensure we had all the functionality we wanted.

It was a brilliant result for us, and we thought we’d share the love, offset our investment, and make our custom code available at a very reasonable price point, so others who choose Interspire’s Email Marketer as their autoresponder can benefit.

Enjoy!
.Pete

Features of Interspire Email Marketer Extension

There are three core features or additions to the feature-set of Interspire Email Marketer that are included in this extension pack:

1. Segmented Broadcast Mailings [Include/Exclude]

If you’re a savvy marketer, you might often need to send a message to a group of subscribers whilst excluding subscribers who are also on another list.

For instance, let’s say you have two lists and email campaigns running, one for buyers of Product A, the other for Product B.

However, some subscribers to the Product A list are also on the Product B list and vice versa. One day, you want to run a promotion and send a message to the customers of Product A to give more information about and cross-sell the related Product B.

But what about the people who have already purchased both products? They can get quite annoyed when they see the special offer on a product they’ve already purchased — especially if it was at a higher price! By excluding a list from a broadcast, you can ensure that anyone on that list will not receive the message, even if they are on the specific list(s) you are sending to. This way, we could ensure that anyone who already purchased Product B would not receive the special promotional email.

Unfortunately, this is not easily done in the standard edition of Interspire Email Marketer — until now!

This custom feature adds the functionality to allow you to ‘exclude subscribers’ from specific lists when sending out a broadcast.

During the ‘Send Email Campaign’ process of a broadcast, simply select the lists whose subscribers will be deduced and removed from the mailing.

2. Advanced Unsubscribe-On-Subscribe Automation Trigger

As important as all marketers know it is, managing your subscribers and lists can be a customer service nightmare — especially if they are on more than one list. How can you make sure that the right customers are getting the right information from the right list?

Just like an autoresponder series means less work when following up and increasing your transactions per period, automation rules (known as Triggers in IEM) mean less manual work when managing subscribers on several lists.

Unfortunately in the standard Interspire Email Marketer release, they don’t do a great job of automatically Separating Prospects From Customers.

Let’s say you just sell one product, Product A, and thus have two email lists — one for Product A customers and one for prospects.

Obviously, you want your prospects to purchase Product A, so you have an autoresponder campaign set up to promote the benefits of investing in Product A.

But what happens when they get all excited and buy Product A halfway through the sequence? The emails targeted to your prospect list aren’t relevant to them anymore.

By using the advanced “unsubscribe-on-subscribe” trigger inside this extension pack, your prospect list subscribers can be automatically removed from the old list when they purchase Product A.

Unsubscribe-on-subscribe is a very important automation trigger (which we can’t believe Interspire left out) because of how it automatically moves subscribers between your various lists. Once your prospects buy from you and turn into customers, this trigger/rule ensures they’ll be on the relevant list — for future emails, autoresponders and other upsells.

3. Dedupe Upon Manual Import.

Sometimes you need to import a list of new contacts into an Interspire list. Maybe you’ve done an offline promotion to generate new leads for your business (via a trade show or third-party list-building tool), and want to subscribe them to a ‘welcome autoresponder’ series introducing them to your business, products and solutions.

But what happens if some people on the list are already familiar with you and already subscribed to other lists you have? Surely, you don’t want to abuse the relationship you have already built with those prospects or customers by putting them through an introductory, ‘this is who we are’ series of emails (that they possible already went through previously).

The Dedupe on Manual Import feature allows you to select a (single) existing list that your imported email addresses will be reduplicated against — to ensure only new contacts will be added to your chosen list.

What’s Included in the “Add-On Pack”

Unlike WordPress, Interspire Email Marketer isn’t built with plugins, extensions and add-ons in mind. So to create the feature set mentioned above, the development team had to modify some of the core files that Interspire runs on.

It’s these modified .php and .tpl files that you will be able to instantly download and install, having you up and running with these advanced Interspire functions in no time.

Upon your purchase of this Interspire Email Marketer Modification Pack, you will be provided the above files in a .zip file for installation.

Installation Process For “Plugin”

As mentioned, Interspire isn’t designed with true plugin functionality in mind. But that’s doesn’t mean the set-up process is hard — in fact, it couldn’t be easier. It really is just a matter of 1,2,3.

Back up your existing Interspire Email Marketer system files.This can be done by simply logging into your host via FTP, and downloading a copy of the abovementioned files (or the entire file structure) to ensure you have a working copy.

Upload and overwrite the files provided in this advance bundle.Ensure you upload the files in the correct sub-folders as shown above.

Server Side Note: When we initially installed the “plugin,” we did have to make a slight adjustment to the server settings to allow for the advanced processing required to run some of the features. You may need to increase your server’s PHP Memory Limit to 64M or higher. The two easiest ways are: a) editing the .htaccess, or b) adding php.ini file on your hosting server.

[Legal Notice: Please be aware that this extension pack is clearly an edit/tweak of the official Interspire Email Marketer code. And while all care was taken and the feature set is absolutely working on our live Interspire IEM installation, we are not responsible in any way, shape, form or level, for any errors or problem (of any size or nature) caused by installing the customised code.]

Plugin Support

The three features of this extension pack have been developed and tested on Interspire Email Marketer version 6.1.3 and 6.1.4:

As I am sure you’ve realised we are not a development company, and don’t even pretend to play one here on the internet.

Therefore, we can’t offer high-level support for these modifications. They are simply something we invested heavily in getting developed for our own needs, and wanted to share with the wide community at a fair price that would help offset our investment.

If you purchase the extension pack and need some advanced help, please do let us know though… and we can connect you with our developer for direct one-on-one support (removing PreneurGroup from the picture).

Purchase IEM Extension v1.01

To get instant access to these three highly impactful marketing add-ons for Interspire Email Marketer, simply complete your details below, and you will receive an email which includes a direct link to the downloadable .zip file and everything you need to get started..

]]>http://preneurmarketing.com/online-marketing/interspire-email-marketer-extension-add/feed/18Guest Posting on PreneurMarketinghttp://preneurmarketing.com/online-marketing/guest-posting-preneurmarketing-guidelines/
http://preneurmarketing.com/online-marketing/guest-posting-preneurmarketing-guidelines/#commentsThu, 26 Sep 2013 23:49:14 +0000http://preneurmarketing.com/?p=7781You always remember your first time! I remember mine like it was yesterday. I was 8 years old and couldn’t have been more excited. If the thrill of being asked wasn’t enough… the anticipation almost made me burst! As I wrote about in my first book, How to Turn Your Million-Dollar Idea Into a Reality, I had an extremely tiny newsletter at the time (with a readership of about 3), but when I was given the opportunity to write for a national publication — this was what all that 2nd grade spelling homework was for! Leveraging off someone else’s hard

I remember mine like it was yesterday. I was 8 years old and couldn’t have been more excited.

If the thrill of being asked wasn’t enough… the anticipation almost made me burst!

As I wrote about in my first book, How to Turn Your Million-Dollar Idea Into a Reality, I had an extremely tiny newsletter at the time (with a readership of about 3), but when I was given the opportunity to write for a national publication — this was what all that 2nd grade spelling homework was for!

Leveraging off someone else’s hard work of building an audience and being able to reach their readers quickly and easily — that’s the ticket:

That one experience of writing for a publication much bigger than mine planted a very lucrative seed.

While many online marketers build their own blog, painstakingly write content and just pray for an audience to come by… smart marketers, Preneur-style marketers, START by hacking all this, and reach out to others who already have the platform, focus on writing amazingly good content, and quickly build a name for themselves by standing on the shoulders of giants.

Man, building an audience is hard work… and that’s why I DON’T highly recommend it!Click To Tweet

I’m not overly surprised that most people don’t do it early on, though. They’re not really taught it (it’s a strategy that makes for a very small course and shitty sales letter!)

Yet, rather than waiting for Google to love you, by doing this you get exposure to an already existing audience of readers (on blogs that have spent the time and money to get popular), get good-quality SEO back links and, if done right, get these readers to visit your own blog and join your email subscription lists.

When done right, it’s by far the best strategy I know to build an audience, subscriber list, and business online.

… And that’s why I want to open up that opportunity to you, our community members, here at PreneurMarketing.com

WHAT THE PRENEUR COMMUNITY WANTS

Like every blog, we have a specific audience with expectations. They are part of this community and come to the site for a reason, so we have to make sure expectations are met to ensure they keep coming back!

Essentually we’re all about evidence-based data-driven essays between 1800 and 3050 words (sweet spot is 2600) around one of the following topic areas:

7 Levers Test ResultsAs I hope you know, the 7 Levers of Business Framework is a cornerstone to Preneur-style marketing. The core idea being that 10% incremental increases produce massive bottom line results for every business.
So if you’ve tested, implemented or tweaked one (or more) of the 7 Levers in your business, and you’re happy to share the ‘Before + After’ or ‘A/B Split Results’ with the community, we’d love to hear from you.Maybe you found a small nugget that increased your Traffic, or perhaps you adjusted your proposal which saw a 10% increase in conversions, or you have an awesome script you always use on suppliers to ensure you get additional rebates above and beyond your competitors to improve your margins.

Behind-the-Scenes or Over-the-Shoulder Case StudiesDone a really cool project and want to brag a little? Here’s the place to do that.Maybe you’ve created a piece of online software and want to share the steps you took to get your first client, or perhaps you’re an author and did some creative marketing you can share, or just want to share how to manage your team of outsourcers using a specific tool or system. If you’re happy to share, warts and all, then we’re all ears.

Preneur-Style Marketing ‘How To’ GuidesIf you’ve got experience with any type of direct marketing campaign and a proven track record to back it up, open up and share the love. Are you a Facebook advertising expert and want to share the steps on creating News Feed adverts? Maybe you’re a podcaster and want to share how you built a large audience from scratch? Or maybe you know how to get 99% of your graphic design work done without knowing how to use Photoshop?

Extremely Well-Researched Strategy EssaysOK, this one is a little more subjective. But if you feel you’ve got a great topic that you can research and write about, reach out to us. Although most opinion pieces here on PreneurMarketing.com are left to Pete, we do accept the odd theory focused, educational-style strategy essays – if they are unique and impactful for marketers.

Book ExcerptsFinally, if you’re an author with a new book on marketing, business, finance or self-help and want to reach the Preneur audience, this is a great way to move a lot of books.
In addition to our regular author interviews on the PreneurCast podcast, we’d like to give you the opportunity to share your knowledge with our audience here on the blog. If there’s a specific chapter or section from your new title that is a perfect fit with our community and an ideal teaser for the whole book, we’d be honoured to print it here on the site and encourage people to open their wallets on Amazon, etc.

GUEST POST: DO’s, DON’Ts & EXPECTATIONS

Now obviously one of the main motivations for doing guest posts is for the SEO backlink love you get… but we have some do’s, don’ts to ensure we stay on the right side of Mr Google, Matt Cutts, who had this to say about guest posts:

Also as we’ve spoken about on the marketing podcast, expectation management is crucial to success with staff, clients and partners. So in an effort to walk the talk, these are the rules, regulations and expectations when it comes to guest posts on PreneurMarketing.com.

We Don’t Want to Be Your First Time.
As we said above, everyone’s first time is special. But in this case, we don’t ideally want to go through that with you… unless you are super-duper special. So we suggest you take the principles shared below and reach out to someone else first, and then came back for Round 2.

Don’t Write the Post Before You Pitch.
We simply don’t have time to read a 2000+ word article cold. Take us out to coffee first, let us know what you’re about, and most importantly what your article is potentially about. This way, if it is a fit, we can work with you to craft the article arc to ensure we maximise your article’s impact with the Preneur Community (and save us all a bunch of time and effort).

Outbound Links.
Sure, we’ll link back to your site from the article. It’s one of the key benefits of guest posting, right?
BUT there are some conditions we want to mention right up front. Firstly, you can link once to your personal website and once to a social media profile of yours (we suggest Twitter). Secondly, we reserve the right, and probably will, override or include affiliate links where applicable in your article. Thirdly, we do in fact encourage links throughout your article, especially if you reference others or want to add to the education of our readers. The same goes for videos like the one above.

Your Article Must Be Congruent with Preneur-Style Marketing.I think this is (hopefully) a redundant point, BUT, make sure what you pitch is relevant to our readers. Take the time to listen to some of the podcast episodes and read some of our older essays to make sure what you are pitching matches.
You would be surprised how many pitches we do get on topics we completely disagree with such as “tips on building your business through branding.”

Copyright Ownership.We own the copyright of your article once it’s submitted (not published, submitted). Now don’t get your knickers all in a knot just yet. You will be credited 100%, we’ll link to you as per the point(s) above, but we own the copyright in all forms and in perpetuity. This also means we reserve the right to edit and adapt your guest blog content as we see fit.

Supporting the Community.This is not a one-night stand relationship. You can’t just come here, hit-it, and quit-it. You’re expected to support your article, and most importantly our community, via comment replies, at least once a week, for the 4 weeks after the post is live. Failure to show the love may result in backlink removal, and thus no SEO benefit.

Your Opinion Doesn’t Matter.
You might be a marksman with a pen who can argue a point with the best of them. But it’s much harder and, frankly, better for our community, to produce data that backs up your argument: research, charts, data, and expert quotes, not your opinion. All the same, we want the facts.

It Was Called Show & Tell for a Reason.Around the same time as the article for Australian Basketball News above, Pete was doing show and tell in class… And just like us, the teacher wouldn’t expect a story without a ‘SHOW,’ in both contexts of the word. So, make sure you SHOW some results and data, but put on a SHOW and make your story engaging (see above for the other reason for this).

Can You Repulish the Article: Yes or No?Sure, but with a few conditions that helps everyone.
You can republish the article you write for us, upon direct written approval, on your own website, with clear acknowledgement it was originally a guest post on our site (with a direct backlink and a Canonical Meta Tag, pointing to the post URL on our site – don’t worry if this doens’t mean anything to you, we’ll help you out).

GUEST POST STYLE GUIDELINES

Once you’ve pitched us your story using the instructions at the end of this post and you’re off to the races writing, these are some style guidelines for you or your ghostwriter/editor.

Have a sprinkling of social media shareable “pull-quotes” throughout your article, just like the one earlier in this post.

By the sheer science of it, most well-researched evidence-based data-driven articles should be over betweem 1800 and 3050 words (if it’s shorter, you gotta sell us on why).

An ideal framework or structure for your post/essay/article should be:

Personal story for introduction

Core content piece

Case study in support for core argument

Call to action

If your introduction doesn’t sell the reader on the benefits of the article, please provide a two-paragraph excerpt we can use on the homepage of the site to encourage readership.

Ensure the final draft is copy and paste-ready. As in, once we’ve gone back and forth with a draft of two, make sure you submit the final version in a .txt file with plain HTML (including links, images and tables etc.), so we can simply copy and paste your work into our site, ready for publication.

APPLYING FOR A GUEST POST SPOT

Alrighty then, let’s get to work! Here’s how to apply for a guest posting spot on PreneurMarketing.com (or any other website for that matter).

Participate in Our Site/Community.
Like we said earlier, let’s get to know each other before we get intimate. Spend an hour or three reading what’s already here, and leave a few thoughtful comments around the place. Maybe send some social love our way by sharing your favourite article on Twitter, etc.

My name is Billy and I run BillysBusinessBlog.com. I’ve been reading your site for a few months now (leaving comments regularly) and I’m a big fan (I loved your recent article on email marketing. I actually wrote a review piece about it on my site).

I’m interested in writing a guest post for PreneurMarketing.com — something you’ve never posted on — and I have 3 ideas that I think the Preneur Community would love:

INCREASING TRANSACTIONS
– We recently increased our transactions per period by…
– Some interesting quick facts about what was done.
– How the community will benefit from this information.

HOW TO USE OUTBRAIN.COM
– We’ve been using OutBrain.com to drive over 4,500 new visitors a day
– Some interesting quick fact about what was done.
– How the community will benefit from this information.

BEHIND THE SCENES ON A RECENT AFFILIATE PROMOTION
– We recently generated $7,000 in aff. comms. from a list of only 324
– Some interesting quick fact about what was done.
– How the community will benefit from this information.

If you feel any, or all three, of these articles, fit the Preneur Community, I will be able to turn them around in about 12 days.

I know you’re super busy. So as you said in your guidelines, we will write everything up and send it to you in one document which you can drop right into WordPress.

Follow Us UpNot because we don’t care, but because we are busy, you might not get a response right away. So feel free to prove to us that you can follow through and are serious about the guest post by following us up a week or so later if you haven’t heard anything.

That about does it for now… We’re looking forward to hearing from you!

]]>http://preneurmarketing.com/online-marketing/guest-posting-preneurmarketing-guidelines/feed/0LeadPages Webinar Replay + My PDF Noteshttp://preneurmarketing.com/online-marketing/webinar-replay-my-pdf-notes/
http://preneurmarketing.com/online-marketing/webinar-replay-my-pdf-notes/#commentsWed, 05 Jun 2013 01:40:11 +0000http://www.preneurmarketing.com/?p=4565So I took a whole bunch of handwritten notes during the webinar we ran at the end of last week with guest presenter Clay Collins of LeadPages. They might not be as brilliant as previous notes I’ve sent out, but I was answering the 104+ questions we had in the chat box during the presentation at the same time. Insanity! Here are my notes in a 3-page PDF. (Hope you can read my handwriting.) “Seeing how all your landing pages can work together as a sales machine was illuminating! Everyone should see this!” — Marcos D. “This is definitely the

Charity Support

Now obviously, to test out Vimeo’s (video) On Demand service, we have to charge for the replay… So we’re making it super cheap: only $1.99.

(Hey, I did say originally we were not going to be “giving away” a replay.)

BUT every single cent is going straight to charity (DonorChoose and Kiva).

I think video on demand is a very viable monetization strategy for a lot of information marketers — and will let you all know the results form this test and if Vimeo’s platform is worth using, in a few weeks.

As I said above, the webinar and our guest presenter Clay were absolutely killer, as you’ll see from the attached PDF notes.

WARNING: Clay does talk quite a lot about his software business during the webinar, so don’t’ get offended… But I’ve got him to agree to help anyone out who watches the replay, and still do the 5 landing page critiques and report design he talks about!

]]>http://preneurmarketing.com/online-marketing/how-i-saved-1204-yesterday-thanks-to-ivideohero/feed/1ProfitHacks Launch: The Best Bits…http://preneurmarketing.com/online-marketing/profithacks-launch-the-best-bits/
http://preneurmarketing.com/online-marketing/profithacks-launch-the-best-bits/#commentsThu, 22 Nov 2012 21:04:48 +0000http://www.preneurmarketing.com/?p=3188Hey Gang… Well, what a crazy few weeks! Big thanks to everyone who played along at home during the recent public launch of ‘ProfitHacks’ – I really appreciate everyones feedback to the videos, participation in the insane livestreams, the standing ovation from those who were at the ‘Experts Industry Association’ conference where I spoke, and especailly to all the launch partners for supporting and promoting the program to thier communities. [It was extremely humbling that some of the smartest people I’ve learned from over the years, felt that my program was worthy of thier endorsement – Dan Kennedy, Brian Tracy

Big thanks to everyone who played along at home during the recent public launch of ‘ProfitHacks’ – I really appreciate everyones feedback to the videos, participation in the insane livestreams, the standing ovation from those who were at the ‘Experts Industry Association’ conference where I spoke, and especailly to all the launch partners for supporting and promoting the program to thier communities. [It was extremely humbling that some of the smartest people I’ve learned from over the years, felt that my program was worthy of thier endorsement – Dan Kennedy, Brian Tracy etc etc ]

Given my day-to-day is primarily the ‘real world businesses’, I learned so much about doing an info-product launch, and will break it down in/on an upcomming edition of the PreneurCast show… to share the learnings I had.

But for those who missed the party, (the product is currently closed as we start the Q+A sessions next week), here’s a list of links to some of the cooler stuff we did, content partners released and conversations I participated in as part of the launch.

There is a tonne of take-away lessons and learing here for you to swipe + deploy in your own businesses, without having to invest in the course itself.

Enjoy!

http://eddale.co/profithackswebinar/
Ed Dale and I did a jam packed webinar titled ‘How To Go From Working Full Time To Your Own Business Without Doing It The Hard Way’ – we’re we talked about the transition a lot of entrepreneurs face when moving from the stable paycheck to the ‘self employment’ world.

http://www.noblesamurai.com/…/is-this-the-new–seo/
The amazing team over at NobleSamurai, did a number of substance rich blog posts (and videos) talking about, thier area of expertise, SEO and how a number of the core fundamentals of ProfitHacks supports and overcomes a lot of the challengers ‘SEOers’ are currently facing.

http://profithacks.com/live/highlights/
This is a replay of the final livestream we did as part of the launch. Yes there is a hard pitch near the end.. but the first half of the video is all content; particularly focused on “A Blueprint to ProfitHack Your Business” – It covers the process, system and steps I suggest ‘newbies’ follow while working to make the transition from pay-check to entrepreneur.

http://successsculpting.com/1356/secret-productivity-hacks-to-increase-productivity/
in this podcast with Stephen Pierce, for ‘The Success Sculpting Show’ I discussed the concept of Core Vs Mechanics; and how this one distinction can free you up from unnecessary tasks in your day. How to be more productive as an entrepreneur and employee. The importance of leverage; and how to really apply it for massive productivity gains. Why you need to start relaxing and exercising more, to increase productivity at work.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ziKIixRERuk&vq=hd720
In this webinar Eugene from Noble Samurai and I answered lots of BIG questions their community were asking, including: What do I do if I’m just starting out and can’t afford to employ a team? I’m just dipping my toes into Internet marketing – where do I start? How and where do I find a trustworthy, affordable VA? What’s the best way of increasing quality, targeted traffic to my website? How do I create good quality content in a short amount of time?

http://profithacks.com/mindset/
As part of taking Profit Hacks to market, we did a intenal beta-launch to some of Rich Schefren’s clients… This video except is taken from the morning session of a closed-door client day we had in Florida; where business owners from all over the world who were applying the ProfitHacks strategies in thier projects come to hang out, network and get one-on-one support from me and the team.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJnP3LfzJKU
In this exclusive behind-the-scenes footage from our beta-launch livesteam, Rich and I give the story behind the Profit Hack system… and how you can use it to get the maximum amount of leverage (and profits) in your business with the least amount of effort. This Directors Cut also features clips from real-live people who were already using the Profit Hacks strategies to “revolutionize” their businesses.

http://www.profithacks.com/experts-academy-interview/
While I was hanging out in California at the ‘Experts Industry Association’, New York Times BestSelling Author Brendon Burchard and I had a conversation about ProfitHacks and how it applies to coaches, speakers, authors etc etc.

]]>http://preneurmarketing.com/online-marketing/profithacks-launch-the-best-bits/feed/2R.I.P. SEOhttp://preneurmarketing.com/online-marketing/rip-seo/
http://preneurmarketing.com/online-marketing/rip-seo/#commentsFri, 09 Nov 2012 01:01:37 +0000http://www.preneurmarketing.com/?p=3160Imagine one day you logged onto your computer only to find your business had disappeared from the Internet. No sales, no clicks, no visitors, no nothing. Your presence online had virtually been deleted. Because your chief marketing strategy had suddenly and inexplicably been outlawed. Suddenly you had no way to reach your market, no way to attract prospects, no way to basically earn a living. OK, while that scenario may sound a bit apocalyptic, the end result danger can be very real. Especially if you fall into the trap that far too many entrepreneurs do. The trap of trying to

]]>Imagine one day you logged onto your computer only to find your business had disappeared from the Internet. No sales, no clicks, no visitors, no nothing.

Your presence online had virtually been deleted. Because your chief marketing strategy had suddenly and inexplicably been outlawed.

Suddenly you had no way to reach your market, no way to attract prospects, no way to basically earn a living.

OK, while that scenario may sound a bit apocalyptic, the end result danger can be very real. Especially if you fall into the trap that far too many entrepreneurs do.

The trap of trying to build their reputation, their following, their credibility all on their own. And to do it by relying solely on one overly popular strategy to get it done… SEO.

What if SEO died?

So let me ask you a question? What if there was no more SEO? What if it was outlawed around the world? What if your single biggest source of traffic was stamped DOA?

What would you do?

Ridiculous question? Well maybe. But the truth is, there is a very real danger to relying on any one tactic or strategy too heavily.

And unfortunately it’s an error that too many entrepreneurs make right out of the gate. They focus far too much of their time on one single tactic or another. And that, by itself, is a dangerous strategy.

Marketing strategist Jay Abraham once called it, building a “one legged table.” If something happens to that one leg, your business could be wiped out.

So it’s far smarter to have a more flexible more robust strategy to not only protect yourself, but also to continuously grow your business.

Alternatives to DIY…

One of the key alternatives to doing it yourself, is something I call “Standing on the shoulders of Giants.” That basically means leveraging other online business peoples lists, reputations, and communities.

It’s not that hard.

The key to getting your content out with them is by thinking about their self-interest. What would make them look good in the eyes of their followers.

Then simply create some value that they’d be happy to share with their crowd. It can be an interview with them. Or offer to write a guest blog. Contribute an article or a podcast…

If that sounds impossible remember, just like you, they have to create killer content for their crowd. If you can offer them something they would be happy to offer, they’ll most likely jump at it in a heartbeat. They’re giving their followers great value, and they’re getting a load of work off their own desk.

And they’re giving you a great boost in your reach throughout the Internet.

So here’s your action step. Find two or three celebrities in your niche, and think of what kind of value you could offer them to make their lives easier…

]]>http://preneurmarketing.com/online-marketing/rip-seo/feed/4The Obstacle With MicroPayments.http://preneurmarketing.com/online-marketing/the-obstacle-with-micropayments/
http://preneurmarketing.com/online-marketing/the-obstacle-with-micropayments/#commentsTue, 09 Oct 2012 01:52:44 +0000http://www.preneurmarketing.com/?p=3133As Marketing Pilgrim reported today, Google is now trialing a new micro-payment service. The article, Would You Pay 50 Cents to Read This Post? Google Tests Micropayments for Content, starts by saying: “People have always been happy to pay for newspaper and magazine subscriptions, as long as the words arrived printed on actual paper. Asking those same people to buy that same content in digital form is another story” and goes on to raise an obvious question: “What they’re building is iTunes for content instead of music. A song for $.99 is an impulse buy, a $9.99 album not so

“People have always been happy to pay for newspaper and magazine subscriptions, as long as the words arrived printed on actual paper. Asking those same people to buy that same content in digital form is another story”

and goes on to raise an obvious question:

“What they’re building is iTunes for content instead of music. A song for $.99 is an impulse buy, a $9.99 album not so much. The difference is, we listen to songs over and over again. How many articles would you read more than once?”

THE THING IS THOUGH…

What people are buying, when purchasing a newspaper or a magazine, especially traditionally, is not the information, OR it being ‘printed on actually paper‘.

They were paying for the access to information.

AND ALAS THE CURRENT PROBLEM facing online publishers…

… access to alternate pieces of “micro- content”, content only worth 50cents, is in abundance on the web.

Want to find out about different knitting yarns?

1] You can stumble across this page, probably from a google search, decide the information is worth 50cents to you, fumble through login/purchase process, and then consume the content.

OR

2] You can stumble across this page, probably from a good search, realise they want to charge you 50cents, decide the time and effort to login isn’t worth 50cents, hit the back button, click the 2nd listing in the Google results, and then consume that content.

—

As the author points out, iTunes is entertainment; and people are clearly willing to pay .99 cents for entertainment they can enjoy over and over again.

But information?

Most information is consumed once, and then internalised in the form of knowledge.

… and as I said, it was and still is the access to the information (for consumption and retention) that people are willing to pay for,

… only if made available in a (perceived) vacuum, without easily accessible alternatives.

—

It is this ‘perceived vacuum’ that is the true obstacle that online publishers need to overcome to make micro-payments succeed.